Pardon the Dust
by cinnab3an
Summary: Supposedly the pool at Derek's new apartment complex is haunted. Or so says the kid that likes to hang around it and annoy Derek like it's his job.


Derek is irritated, at first, at the guy who hangs around the pool of his new apartment complex. He'd been both thrilled and perplexed to find that the pool yard was empty most of the time, and had made the unfortunate decision to say such to the only other person who was hanging around it. The guy had raised both eyebrows in clear amusement before saying, "Don't you know this place is haunted?" He'd taken Derek's look of disapproval in with a sharp laugh and leaned in, adding, "they say you can see the ghost 'round here. So nobody wants to come."

He instantly finds himself disliking the guy—Stiles, apparently—and the disturbing sense of humor that makes itself known the more Derek runs into him at the pool. He's lucky enough not to see the guy around the rest of the complex, but Stiles seems to be there every time he wants to go to the pool, ready to quip and joke and annoy the shit out of Derek like it's his job. Derek knows it's unlucky of him to get stuck with somebody he finds so infuriating shortly after moving into a new place, but it there's nothing he can do short of never leaving his apartment or never coming back to it.

(He tried that, of course. Both of them. He spent two weeks working out of Laura's house until she bullied an explanation out of him and then sent him away with a laugh, then another week locked in his own place, only coming out to get his mail.)

They exist like that for two months, where every interaction between him and Stiles is antagonistic and volatile. Then something changes, and everything Stiles says that once might have made him angry now spurs a chuckle, and sometimes even a laugh out of Derek. Then the times they push each other are not violent pushes, but joking ones. Then Derek finds himself looking forward to days that are warm enough for him to reasonably visit the pool.

Then, around the time Derek's been living in his complex for about five months, he realizes he might be falling in love. He notices that he lingers sometimes, when touching his neighbor, and that he often finds it hard to tear his eyes away on the days Stiles is lounging about his favorite pool chair without a shirt.

He does his best to repress it for about a week after the discovery—Derek Hale is not the kind of person who expects their crush to spontaneously develop feelings in return immediately following a confession, nor does he think Stiles would appreciate someone who does expect that— and everything seems to be fine, if not fraught with unresolved lust on Derek's part, until the first day of October comes, and the pool boy comes with to clean and empty it out.

Stiles spares him almost no attention that day. He has eyes only for the pool boy, and Derek feels uncomfortable and jealous like he hasn't in a long, long time.

Scott, the pool boy, doesn't seem to notice Stiles at all. He seems curious enough about why Derek is hanging around the pool when it can't be used but doesn't say anything to him either.

Derek only stays long enough to see Stiles fix the pool boy with a look of desperation, then he turns on his heels and goes back home. He stays away from the pool for a week. He doesn't see stiles or the pool boy again.

Stiles is thrilled when the new guy at the apartment talks to him for the first time. Sure, he ends up being insulting, but with clever ones, and Stiles always appreciates people who are sharp enough to return his banter quip for quip without anyone taking things too far.

He has fun bantering with Derek that day, and randomly over the next five months as well. He thinks he might be a little eager to push his buttons but he can't exactly help it. People aren't exactly lining up to talk to him that much, anymore.

Sure, he talks at everybody who comes near the pool, but Derek's pretty much the first one in nearly three years to talk back. He might be falling in love.

Somehow, the two of them find their way into a friendship. Stiles is happy to have a friend again. He's been so lonely over the last few years.

Then, on the first day of October, Stiles finds himself with baited breath as he waits at the pool. Derek comes, yeah, but stiles pays him less attention than he had even on the day they first met.

Derek seems a little hurt, but Stiles is too preoccupied with the pool boy, when he arrives. He'd seen Scott last year at the end of summer, but not since then. He's missed him.

He mumbles something, probably a greeting, at who used to be his best friend, but Scott pays him no mind, much like the last three years.

And yeah, maybe stiles is a little bitter about that, and maybe he is ruder to Derek than he should be, but all it takes is one glance at Scott for him to lose interest in anything else.

Derek leaves with a huff, and Scott watches him go before turning back to the pool he's draining. He hesitates before reaching into the pocket of his uniform and withdrawing a small metal sculpture of a flower.

Scott thumbs the petals of the flower for a few seconds, staring absentmindedly into the pool, then he turns on his heels and marches over to Stiles' favorite pool chair. There's a garden that runs the perimeter of the pool yard, and the chair is by the only section that has the flowers his mother loved. Scott rubs a hand over the arm of the chair for a moment and then he crouches and buries the metal flower in the garden next to the dying plants.

When he steps back, stiles looks at the fresh grave with tears in his eyes. He ignores the other patches of misplaced dirt beside the new one, where the other flowers had been buried in the years before.

"Happy birthday, stiles," Scott says to the buried flower. He nods shortly at the pool chair and then gets back to work emptying the pool. His eyes are wet, but no tears fall.

Stiles watches him work.

Scott finishes the pool at the end of the week. He takes a look around the yard and then gives a little half wave, same as the last few years.

Stiles watches him lock the pool gate behind himself as he leaves.

He casts a final look at the empty pool, the favorite chair, and the garden with the buried metal flowers. Then he closes his eyes and lets himself disappear again.

Derek asks around the complex after November passes without any sign of Stiles. Lydia Martin from the room next door calls him a moron. Jackson Whittemore from the penthouse glares at him and then slams the door shut. Erica and Vernon Boyd, the newlyweds who have him dogsit for them every other week, shrug at him, the coldest they've ever been to his face. Isaac Lahey, the resident who'd moved in only a month before Derek had and had been the one to show him around, frowns and shakes his head without a word.

Derek doesn't understand how any of the people he lives with can possibly not know who he's talking about. It's been impossible for him to ignore Stiles since day one, even when they hated each other.

It's Allison Argent, the neighbor who's been the quietest toward him, who clues him in. she stares at him when he asks her if she might know what had happened to the hyperactive punk who liked to hang around the pool, then invites him in her room with a sad look.

She has him sit on one of the loveseats in the living room while she goes to get something from her bedroom.

Allison gives him a tentative smile when she returns and hands him a newspaper. Derek flips through it absently, wondering if she's actually going to help him, when a familiar face catches his eyes.

A full picture of Stiles with a wide grin covers a quarter of a page. **_Teen Slaughtered in Burglary Gone Wrong_** , reads the title of the article.

Derek stares at the picture and the words for a moment. "Is this some kind of joke?" he snaps when he turns back to Allison. She has tears in her eyes when she shakes her head. Derek glares at her and then at the paper. He doesn't want to read it.

Allison catches his shoulder when he bursts to his feet. "Wait," she says, shoving the paper back in his hands. "You need to understand. If—if you've seen him, you need to read it. Please. For Stiles."

He takes the paper and leaves.

It's an hour before he can bring himself to read the article, another hour after that before he can finish it. He gets caught on _group of five_ and _led them away from a pair of kids_ and _chased and cornered in the pool yard_.

He has to stop entirely when he gets to _police raced as fast as they could but did not make it in time._

The pair of kids mentioned were being babysat by Stiles while the parents were out when a group of wannabe burglars had broken in, thinking the place to be empty. _Guns had been drawn_ , claimed the kids. Stiles had lured them away from the kids and out of the building after urging them to call the police. He'd saved both their lives, as well as the others on the floor, when he'd led them and their weapons away.

They'd cornered him in the pool yard, until the police came.

Stiles had been found, dead, shot in both shoulders and stabbed 47 times in the torso.

 _47 times._

Derek reads that line six times before he can comprehend it.

He wonders how this all could have happened without him hearing it. Did it take place during that week he avoided not only the pool but the complex as a whole, as well? When he'd stayed at Laura's and ignored every time she asked if it wasn't his "annoying and hot neighbor" who was the cause of his perpetual frown and glare, was that when Stiles had been chased down, in a place he was supposed to be safe, and murdered?

 _No_. Derek stares hard at the headline. Not just murdered. Slaughtered.  
Something hot and sick burns in his chest, similar to the way he'd felt returning home for the last time after a date he'd been stood up on to find the building in ashes with only his uncle and two of his siblings left. Loss is all consuming, only slightly less painful for the fact that he'd only known Stiles for five months, two of which had been entirely antagonistic.

He forces himself to find the date on the paper. He needs to know when it happened, if only to hate himself when the day comes around every year for spending it gloomy and moping, and does a double take when it's dated for over three years ago.

 _So it is a joke_.

He crumples the paper in his fist and stomps back upstairs to Allison's, who looks at him with wide eyes as she opens the door. Derek waves the paper in her face, ready to snap, when he looks past her and sees Lydia and Isaac waiting inside. He pushes into her apartment and is gearing himself up to demand an explanation when Lydia takes him by the shoulder and pushes him into the same loveseat that Allison had earlier, when she'd given him the paper.

"It's not a joke," is the first thing she says. Derek barely listens out of shock that such a tiny woman was able to move him around with so much ease. "Use your phone to look it up if you have to. He died three and a half years ago when a group of punks tried to rob an apartment and found him and some kids inside."

"I don't believe you," Derek hisses. He throws the newspaper at her.

"Do you know why you got the apartment so easily, Derek? Do you know why you had little to no competition for it?" he glowers at Isaac and refuses to answer. "The apartment that was broken into was 4B. The family moved out after his death because the kids claimed they could still see Stiles around the pool and it was driving their parents crazy. It took a month for someone else to move in because everybody in town knew what happened in those rooms. They only stayed for a year, then bailed out of the lease early because they were 'seeing a ghost' around the pool. One by one, people tried to come back to that apartment and one by one, they were all scared off by the ghost of the boy murdered in the pool." Isaac fixes Derek with a fierce look. "Over the years, the cost of the apartment has gone down so low because the landlord is so desperate to fill it again. The only people who ever applied for it were people from out of town who didn't know what had happened there, like you. Once they found out…"

Derek casts a glare between the three of them but it weakens as the seconds go by and they look no less serious. "I don't believe you," he says again. It's weaker this time.

Allison offers him a watery smile. "No one here really goes to the pool anymore because we all knew Stiles and it's hard for us to see him as he is now. Even Jackson stays away." She rubs a tear from her cheek and looks away. "I bet he was pretty lonely until you showed up. He doesn't really have anybody to talk to since Scott can't see or hear him."

"Scott—the pool boy?"

"He took the job after hearing that people were seeing Stiles there. He'd hoped to see Stiles too but never could, so he only comes around at the beginning and end of pool season now," Lydia explains. "Stiles comes out on Scott's first day in the year and then leaves after the pool closes. The two were best friends since childhood. Only death was able to separate them, in the end."

When Derek gets home, he finds himself going to the windows, first. He looks for the scuffmarks supposedly caused by the murderers when they broke in, and feels his stomach churn when he finds them. The window frame is still scratched, even after years.

He closes both windows and locks them absently before collapsing on his couch and letting everything sink in. he remembers the first thing Stiles said to him and closes his eyes with a sad smile. Haunted. If he'd known the truth behind those words all those months ago, would he have stayed to talk to Stiles? To the ghost? Or would he have bailed out like everybody else who'd seen him?

Derek recalls the unbridled and mischievous glee in Stiles eyes the first time Derek had spoken to him and wonders if he wasn't the first person to communicate with him since his… death. It sounds unbearably lonely, even for a recluse like Derek who'd thought he only needed his sisters to be happy. For a few months, it had been Stiles who made him the happiest.

Now Derek wonders if he'll ever see him again.

December goes by quietly. Laura comes over to visit for Christmas and enquires about Stiles. Derek tells her that he's gone for the holidays.

January passes by with only a little bit of fanfare for New Years. Jackson invites him to the party, upon Lydia's insistence. Derek declines.

February and March are mostly eventless. Allison has her birthday party and Derek stays until Scott shows up. They make brief eye contact. Recognition blossoms on Scott's face. Derek leaves.

In April, Derek's boss offers him a new position. It pays $17,000 more yearly than his current one does. He'd be relocated out of California and to New York if he accepted. He doesn't. He's fine where he is.

May brings with it the anticipation of the upcoming summer season, a kind of anticipation he hasn't felt since he was kid eager to escape school. May 11th is the Day the pool is set to open and Derek calls in sick that day so that he can be there the moment Scott unlocks the gates.

Scott is surprised to see him but doesn't say anything until the door's open and he's got the hose ready to fill the pool. Then he turns to Derek with a frown. "Allison told me you've seen him around. Is that true?"

Derek nods. He doesn't know what else to do. Part of him feels desperate for some kind of approval from Scott as Stiles' best friend; the other part remembers the jealousy he'd sparked on the last day Derek had seen Stiles and wants nothing to do with him.

"Good, I… good. I can't see him but I can feel him, you know?" Scott casts his eyes around like he expects to see Stiles at the very moment. Derek can't help it. He looks too. Stiles isn't there. "I could tell, the last few times I was here, that he's been getting lonelier. Until you. You came and talked to him every day and when I felt him in October… it was the happiest I'd felt him since before he died." Scott sinks into a crouch at the lip of the pool to adjust the hose before fixing Derek with a genuine smile. "Thank you for making him happy, Derek."

He nods again, dumbstruck, and spends the next few hours watching Scott pump water into a hole in the ground and waiting for Stiles to show up, but he never does.

The next few days pass by without any sign of him. Derek overhears Erica musing aloud that Stiles might've finally moved on. He feels both relief and disappointment at the thought, and then disgust for himself for daring to feel disappointed that Stiles was able to move past his tragic death. It doesn't matter.  
Stiles doesn't come.

Derek goes to the pool every day he can, terrified that the day he misses will be the day Stiles comes back.

On June 8th, Laura comes to visit and finds him there. "I know it's your birthday and I shouldn't tease you," she scoffs, "but you are seriously the only fool I know who will actually go to the pool on a day it's pouring down rain. Let's go inside, shall we?"

Derek stares after her with no small amount of despair before forcing himself to follow. The pool's been open for nearly a month and Stiles has yet to appear. Erica must be right, then. He's gone.

He stops at the gate and turns back to give the pool yard a final survey. He doesn't think he'll be able to come back for a long, long time, if at all. When he faces forward again, Laura's gone, so he sighs and gets ready to leave.

There's a sharp sound behind him, like the grate of metal across stone. Then an achingly familiar voice calls out _hey_ and Derek inhales quickly, hardly daring to believe. He counts to ten with eyes closed in hope, then turns to look behind him.

Stiles stands by the chair he'd marked out as his favorite, hands in the pockets of his jeans and a smirk across his face. The rain doesn't appear to have touched him. He looks perfectly dry. Just, perfect in general.

"Stiles," Derek breathes out. The wetness on his cheek is fresh; he doesn't know if it's the rain or tears of joy. He wouldn't be surprised if it were either. He wouldn't be surprised if it were both. He takes a step away from the gate, toward Stiles, whose smirk slips into something softer.

"The one and only," Stiles says. His smile is a little sad, like he knows that Derek knows now.

"What are you doing here?" Derek asks. He keeps moving forward until Stiles is close enough to touch. For the first time, it's clear that he's looking at a ghost. The rain doesn't touch him, firstly, but there's also a tiny hint of transparency in his body, too. His shirt is tinged with dark red, and there are rips and tears visible if he looks hard enough. Derek licks his lips and reaches out.

"I could ask you the same thing!" Stiles laughs as he tips forward to let Derek's hand cup his cheek. They stand like that for a moment until Stiles pushes closer, so that they are pressed right up against each other from chest to toes.

"What are you doing here?" he echoes as he leans in to kiss Derek. "Don't you know this place is haunted?"


End file.
